TechEd 2006 - Day 1 - First Schwag!

Or is it first swag? It’s like the debate between “gif” and “jif”. Anyways, if you’re at TechEd you know all about the goods. You get it the moment you register and the junk you have to take home with you just never stops flowing.

If you’re thinking “Well, it’s all cool but I’ll never use any of this stuff” you might want to take a closer look at what you actually get. There are some pretty neat things you should be aware of with your TechEd backpack.

First there’s the backpack itself. Well, maybe not a backpack in the traditional sense. It’s more like a back-laptop-pack, crossing over some middle ground between geeky bag to hold swag and man-purse. In any case, it’s a good thing and if you don’t have a bag to haul around your goodies, you do now.

Next are the DVDs. You get:

• Visual Studio 2005 Professional 90–Day Trial Edition – This isn’t just VS2005 but the DVD also contains the client tools for Visual Studio Team System as well as some resources like developer tools (Compuware, Crystal Reports, Dotfuscator) and controls and components (CodeRush, Infragistics, ComponentOne, Dundas). Handy if you’re looking to not re-invent the wheel.
• Windows Server Code Name “Longhorn” – Again, the MS Marketing engine is confusing us as we have grown up with “Longhorn” being what became “Vista”. However the next version of Windows Server 2003 is called Longhorn so be it. This contains a bootable DVD of the 32–bit x86 edition of Beta 2.
• Micrsosoft Windows 64–bit Resource DVD – This contains all kinds of white papers, case studies, training videos, and source code for you 64–bit crazies out there.
• Office 2007 Beta 2 – In case you missed downloading it (or couldn’t sit through the download times) this DVD set has all the clients and servers for Office 2007. Just install and get going on the next generation of Office.
• The Cool Way to Power Your Enterprise – This is an AMD disc with a bunch of white papers and video presentations on why AMD is so good. I do run an AMD laptop and all my desktops are AMD so is it good? YMMV.
• Sysinternals Video Library – These guys make the coolest toys so sit back and enjoy a set of video tutorials from the guys that wrote all those tools.
• Windows Vista – As you might have seen recently in the blog-o-sphere, the public beta of Vista went out. Here it is in DVD format if you need a copy.
• Virtual Servers – MS is all about virtualization these days so this contains lots of goodies (including the very free Virtual Server R2) for you virtual geeks
• Secure Messaging Evaluation Kit – This DVD contains a whack of stuff for you security freaks and covers Antigen (including a trial for use with SMTP and Exchange), ISA Server, and lots of presentations and documents on building, configuring, and securing a DMZ.
• How Microsoft does IT – If you have checked out various webcasts and white papers on how Microsoft runs it’s own IT department, then you might want to look at this DVD. It contains all that plus new material with Best Practices and Case Studies on how it all fits together. Handy as I’m sure your own IT department will be much smaller than Microsofts and it’s good to know you’re not trying to do something that’s impossible.
• Office SharePoint Server 2007 Technical Resource DVD – SharePoint is so damn huge that it has it’s own resource DVD. This puppy has everything you want to know about SharePoint 2007 and even contains a very cool VPC all setup and ready to go. Just extract it and run Virtual PC (eval copy included on disc) or Virtual Server R2 (free on the other disc above) and you’re off to the races. You’ll have a completely configured stand-alone server with your own Active Directory, SharePoint Server, Office 2007 client and all the various accounts to use it. Not only that, there are a set of labs and walkthroughs that get you introduced to the various concepts of SharePoint 2007 like the Business Data Catalog, Workflow, Content Types, and more. All goodness.

On top of the DVD/CDs you also get a stack of books and papers. Most people regard these as filler but have you ever read any of them? Here’s some of the highlights of the good stuff here (and things you need to act on in order to cash in on bringing the goodies home with you):

• Conference Expo Guide – Okay, most people don’t bother with this but there are some good things in here like “when are you getting the conference DVDs” and “where the heck are the bathrooms?”. Your TechEd survival depends on it.
• TechEd notepad – No, this isn’t a “special edition” of our favorite notepad.exe (which I’m still waiting for my Notepad MVP award!) but just a blank pad for you to scribble junk down like (short) urls, girls phone numbers (there are some geek girls wandering around, really), and other useless stuff if you’re not the type that brought a laptop.
• System Center Essentials 2007 – Fill out the card and drop it in the Essentials 2007 booth in the Technical Learning Centre (TLC) to win a free Xbox 360.
• MVP – There’s changes happening in the MVP program like the recent “nominate a MVP” update they’ve done to the site. You can go online and nominate someone yourself so if there’s someone in the community that you think should be an MVP and isn’t, here’s your chance.
• Altiris – Stop by booth #316 and get a free sports umbrella (and enter for a chance to win a $500 amazon.com gift certificate)
• MSDN Magazine – You get a free copy of the June 2006 edition of MSDN magazine with a pretty good article on MSBuild and a sampler CD of the Chart FX tools from www.softwarefx.com
• Microsoft Business Intelligence – Check out the Business Intelligence TLC to snag an ugly orange bracelet. It’s ugly but you could win a Plantronics Voyager 510–USB headset (although I think I should win one for writing this crap)
• Symantec – Fill out the card and drop it off at booth #109 for a chance to win a portable Garmin GPS unit.
• In addition, check some of the other papers and flyers as most of them tell you to check out their booth and want you to present that paper to get some extra swag.

Whew. That’s a lot of swag and we’re just on the first day.

Finally I noticed that someone at the show had a sense of humor, but if you don’t get it don’t worry. You need to be at a certain geek level (almost attaining nerd status) for it to be funny.